Eagle Forum Legislative Alerts

Friday, January 11, 2013

Every now and then the Wall Street Journal indulges in a little humor, and I'd like to share one of these rare articles with you today. It's an article presented as big sensational news under the headline: "Males Play Sports Much More Than Females." This is truly a "man bites dog" type of story because what is being reported is already common knowledge. The Wall Street Journal article reports new research by a psychology professor showing that, on average, men play sports three times as often as women. The professor admits that his conclusion is politically incorrect -- the feminists just won't like it. But for most people, the professor just stated the obvious.

Well, if men play competitive sports so much more often than women do, why is female participation in high school and college sports about equal to the male participation? It's only because the federal government, in the name of ending sex discrimination has subsidized, that is, given financial incentives such as the price of college tuition, to females to induce them to participate in sports.

Title IX was passed to end discrimination in schools and colleges. But contrary to the intent of the law, Title IX is used to impose gender quotas. Schools and colleges must equate the ratio of males and females in sports programs to their overall enrollment. When there are more women than men in college, as is now typical, Title IX regulations mandate that women outnumber men by the same ratio on its competitive sports teams. Title IX has compelled colleges to eliminate hundreds of men's teams. At the same time, women take an athletic scholarship mainly to get free college tuition, not because they were keen on sports. Colleges are offering full-ride scholarships to women with no experience in sports that are easy to learn, such as crew.

The United States spends more on sports than any other country in the world, perhaps more than all other countries combined. But if our future great athletes have their spots taken away from them in the name of gender equality, what are we getting for our money?